North Korean Refugees
Turn to China for Survival

By

John Larkin Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated Feb. 27, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET

YANJI, China -- On an icy evening in early February, a 36-year-old widow sat in a meeting hall with dozens of neighbors in her hometown in North Korea. She had been to hundreds of indoctrination sessions, but this one was different, she says. In a monotone, a local communist-party official read the sternest warning yet to anyone thinking of crossing the border into China, only a few miles away, in search of food. "&nbsp;'Don't even think about it,'&nbsp;" the widow recalls the official telling them....